


the tonic of wildness

by KL_Morgan



Series: the tonic of wildness [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/F, a bit of self-indulgence, and one last shot of heartbreak, before Season Three opens the gates to hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KL_Morgan/pseuds/KL_Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, I thought -- because of the antlers --”</p><p>“Anuael is female.” Lexa lifts her hand and her daemon fits her head beneath it, carefully. Her fingers brush up against the velvety softness at each branch’s root, the sensitive spot where the antlers curl out of Anuael’s skull up into a proud six points. “The Commander’s daemon is always a hart.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the tonic of wildness

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I sat down Tuesday to work on my wip and instead this happened. What this show does to my brain, man, I don’t even know. 
> 
> (Also I’m pretty sure Lexa’s throne is just driftwood, but the shape was suggestive and the suggestion led to the story, and I love HDM AUs like a sickness and couldn’t say no. You can decide the throne is different in this universe if it soothes any particularly canon-sensitive nerves.) 
> 
> Happy Season 3 premiere day! Let us ~~fanfic~~ fiddle while Rome burns.

“Oh, I thought -- because of the antlers --”

“Anuael is female.” Lexa lifts her hand and her daemon fits her head beneath it, carefully. Her fingers brush up against the velvety softness at each branch’s root, the sensitive spot where the antlers curl out of Anuael’s skull up into a proud six points. “The Commander’s daemon is always a hart.” 

“To match the throne?” Clarke asks, a bit dry as she apparently recovers her equilibrium.

“Other way around.”

“What?”

“I told you before,” as she drops her hand and settles back against the log. She refuses to wince with the pain in her shoulder. “It is not just my spirit that will endure, but hers. Commanders die and daemons fade, but Anuael will leave her antlers behind as her predecessors have done. They will be shaped and added to the throne as a reminder to the next Commander of who we were, and how well we served the spirit.”

Clarke, she notes with annoyance, looks a little queasy. “That’s...” Her eyes dart back and forth in the clearing as she gropes for words. “Different.”

“As if I was about to draw my knife and carve them from your head right then,” Lexa complains to Anuael when they have returned to camp and are finally alone. She wrestles her boots off her feet one-handed, quashing the urge to throw them across the tent as she places them beside her bed. Anuael is already settled on the floor as Lexa lays back against the furs with a sigh. Her shoulder is a steadily throbbing ache, but she ignores it. “Every time I think we are coming to an accord,” she says, closing her eyes, “something makes it clear how unalike we truly are.”

“By “we,” you mean yourself and --”

“Trikru and _Skaikru_ ,” Lexa snaps. 

She knows Anuael has placed her head on the bed when it dips with the weight. “What does it matter?” the daemon asks. “The Coalition was not formed through understanding, but need. Why should this alliance be any different?”

Lexa rubs the back of one hand against her forehead, as if to massage away the ache that’s building there as she opens her eyes. “I don’t know.”

“It can be tiring,” Anuael offers after a moment, “to constantly convince the others of their best interests. To take on that task alone,” she finishes so softly no one but Lexa could have heard, even someone else had also been standing in the quiet of the tent.

“I’m not alone,” Lexa says as she turns her head. “I have you.” She reaches out to stroke her fingers lightly down the daemon’s soft snout. Anuael closes her dark, liquid eyes in pleasure. 

“Do you think she is a good leader?” Lexa asks, knowing neither of them need to say the name.

“She has kept her people alive. She seeks peace.”

“Hmm.” Lexa traces the darker coloration along Anuael’s face where it stretches between and above her eyes, the white markings beneath. “Her daemon is unusual for a leader.”

Lexa, listening to the reports, had expected something fierce, something cunning -- a stoat, maybe. Not a larger predator, but one that burrowed and wriggled its way into new territory unseen, unexpected until the killing bite at the back of the neck. 

Except Clarke walked into her tent -- _You’re the one who sent them_ , hot-eyed, as if _she_ were the one under attack -- with a mourning dove tucked into the curve of her shoulder and chin. Laerte doesn’t ever speak much that Lexa can hear, preferring to keep close to Clarke and whisper as his gray-brown feathers ruffle. Bird daemons usually mean a restless spirit, dreamers, someone attuned to the pull of both earth and sky and their heart’s longing caught between. Not a leader who lived and died only for her people. 

(Costia’s daemon had been a magpie. He stole strands of her copper-wire curls and she would only laugh, her freckles three shades darker than her dark skin where her nose scrunched up.) 

... but then, Lexa has seen those same birds lure enemies away from their nests by pretending injury, so perhaps Clarke’s daemon only proves she is capable of a different kind of cunning. Certainly her actions with the pauna proved her intelligence. 

The day’s events are taking their toll. Lexa is fighting off sleep -- not for any particular reason, only in that some part of her will always resent any lack of control -- with her hand still cupping Anuael’s ear as she manages, “I think she does not know what kind of leader she wants to be.”

Anuael never rushes to speak, and Lexa is almost lost to her dreams when she hears the soft reply:

“I think she does not know herself.” 

 

___________________________

 

They discover just how true this is quite soon.

It happens during yet another meeting with Clan leaders and generals, voices raised around the table that displays their positioning. 

Lexa wouldn’t have caught it, except she is looking at them both. (Anuael likes to accuse her of looking too often.) So she sees the exact moment when it happens: a comment is tossed in Clarke’s direction, almost smoothly enough to miss the hidden barb except for the soft hiss of the speaker’s snake daemon. Clarke’s head comes up to retaliate, she opens her mouth, and --

That’s when Lexa sees it: Laerte’s pinions and beak sharpen, his head flattens, and dark spots wash in and out of his feathers. 

Lexa sucks in a breath. Clarke’s eyes flicker to her, though no one else’s -- perhaps Lexa is not the only one paying too much attention -- and she pales. She shrugs the shoulder where Laerte is perched, minutely, but it’s enough to jostle him. When Lexa looks again, he’s a round-breasted dove with placid eyes once more.

So Lexa waits until the meeting is concluded and the others have left. Clarke stays behind without having to be told. When it’s only the two of them, she takes Laete from her shoulder and places him down on the table with a shaky sigh.

“Couldn’t hold it together for even a week, huh,” Lexa hears her mutter. Laerte looks back and forth between the two of them -- and a furtive glance at Anuael, stretching behind Lexa’s shoulder to investigate -- before launching himself into the air. Lexa feels her eyes widen as his face squashes inward and fur sprouts as he becomes a hoary bat. He quickly finds purchase hanging upside-down from one of the tent’s beams, wrapping himself in his wings with a petulant hiss. 

“Your daemon hasn’t settled,” Lexa says, and her stomach lurches. It’s so -- it feels --

Clarke is still hunched over the table so that her profile is partially hidden by a curtain of hair. “None of ours have. Not anyone under eighteen. There was,” here she straightens, pushing her hair behind one ear but still refusing to meet Lexa’s gaze, “a movement on the Ark, that first generation. People began to get nervous about how their kids’ daemons would settle, what with the restriction on resources. Not air or food, of course, but can you imagine an elephant daemon on board a spaceship? Or something water-bound?” She laughs, but it sounds nervous. “So they came up with this -- it’s almost a vaccine, of sorts, it prevents settling.” 

Her stomach does another sharp plunge, and Lexa has to grip the edge of the table. “For how long?”

“Eighteen, like I said. The idea is that when a kid is older they can be more... conscious, about the process.” She shrugs, the movement jerky. “It seems to work, most people end up with smaller daemons or forms that aren’t too inconvenient.” 

Anuael presses herself against Lexa’s back, her nose a spot of cold at her neck. It’s rare for them to touch in front of other people, but it’s needed at this moment. A daemon is your _self_ , the truest expression of who you are. To have that controlled, schooled, reduced to _convenience_ \-- 

“You do not take this -- vaccine -- anymore,” Lexa rasps. 

It’s a command, not an inquiry. Lexa is probably lucky that the Sky girl still can’t bring herself to look up from the table, because she takes it otherwise. “No,” she says, her hand going up to rub at her bicep. “The last round was just before they sent down the dropship, but it should wear off soon, and there isn’t any reason to spend the resources to make more. Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why Bellamy had to be the one to infiltrate the Mountain -- or, I guess it could have been Raven, but she’s injured. But, Finn, he never got to --” She seems to realize she’s babbling and makes a visible effort to calm herself, turns to meet Lexa’s eyes. “We realized it could make the Grounders uncomfortable, so we’re trying to be. Consistent. In the meantime.” 

She must catch something in Lexa's expression, because her face dims. "I should have been more careful." She holds her linked hands out and Laerte drops into them. "We will be in the future," she says as she makes for the exit. 

“Clarke, wait.”

She stops. It takes another beat before she turns back around, her expression one of careful detachment.

“I was startled,” Lexa says. “It’s a startling story.” She swallows back the last vestiges of crawling anxiety. “But I am not discomfited.”

“Lexa, I can _see_ you’re discomfited,” Clarke returns.

Lexa straightens. She’s been schooling her expressions since she she was a child, lying through her teeth to people who held lives in the palm of their hand and none of them the wiser. It’s not _that_ easy to know her mind, no matter what this girl thinks. “If I was, it has passed,” she says crisply. “And while I thank you for placating our allies, you don’t need to go to such lengths when it is just us.”

Clarke searches her face, the line deepening between her eyebrows. “What are you saying?”

“It cannot be comfortable, keeping to one shape so often when it is not his chosen form.” Lexa crosses her arms and leans one hip against the table, her stance a challenge if the Sky girl knew how to read it. “Laerte is free to shift as he wishes in my company.”

Small leathery hands part Clarke’s fingers from the loose cage she’s formed around her daemon, and a wrinkled face peers out at Lexa. Above him, Clarke’s face holds the same unblinking astonishment. 

“Thank you,” she says. “Lexa, I --” Clarke looks down to where Laerte has wrapped himself up tight in his wings again. “Thank you.”

 

___________________________

 

“You don’t like them,” Lexa observes one evening, after yet another instance where Clarke spends too much of the night pacing the floor and worrying about things to come. 

“Not true.” Anuael rises from the corner of the tent. She often tucks herself away back there when the Sky girl and her daemon visit, even turning so that all that can be seen of her is the dappled expanse of her back. She shivers now, delicately, the movement running down the trunk of her body and ending in a single, meticulous kick of each hind leg. “It is difficult, sometimes, with Laerte. I don’t want to be an influence.” 

“There we differ,” Lexa says, feeling grim. “If you could encourage her daemon to settle, perhaps Clarke would be more open to guidance about --”

“I think you have enough interest in her daemon for the both of us.”

Lexa freezes, fingers hesitating where she is lifting a map from the table. The parchment slips from the weak grip and flutters to the ground, and she just manages to stop herself from chasing after it and looking like an idiot. 

She _is_ an idiot. 

No one has to be taught, or told, not to touch another person’s daemon. Not unless... To allow someone else to put their hands -- to reach out one’s own hands, or even think about it -- 

She hadn’t thought about it. That might have been the problem. She’d been half-asleep in her bed watching Clarke move about the tent as if it were her own, ignoring the warmth that spread through her limbs at the thought. She learned early on there was little she could do to coax Clarke out of these moods. The best thing Lexa can do for Clarke is provide space: for her fears, for her worries, for Laerte to shift freely. Outside of this tent Clarke is controlled and calm, and Laerte boasts the muddled plumage of a creature skilled at hiding in plain sight. 

So Lexa likes to watch her like this, conscious of the privilege. Perhaps it makes her strange -- but no stranger than a girl who doesn’t know when to take advantage of the rare opportunity for a full night’s sleep. 

That evening had been much of the same: Clarke talking as she circled the tables displaying maps and models, but mostly to herself. Lexa watching, not bothering to provide her half of the conversation, mind wandering with the nonsense that happens on the edge of dreams. She had wondered if anyone ever kissed away Clarke’s frowns when they carved into her mouth. Or put their arm around the girl’s waist to draw her in close, lips against her temple and coaxing _you’ll worry yourself to pieces, come to bed._

There was a brief flapping of wings -- Laerte, who spent most of these evenings moving from spot to spot, never staying in one place too long. This time he had landed on the bed, close to Lexa. Too close. He was driven to such distraction he probably didn’t realize he’d landed within scant inches of her right hand. 

She’d bitten back a laugh at the sight of him: an owl tonight, feathers ruffled up so savagely he looked almost twice his size. The same nonsense logic as before had her thinking of a hand reaching out to soothe them.

Her fingers twitched.

Then she’d bolted upright in the bed as pain lanced through her opposite hand, adrenaline chasing away sleep. Laerte had flown off with a startled hoot, and Lexa had known without looking that Anuael had the fingers of that hand between her teeth. 

“I didn’t do anything,” she says now, retrieving the map as if she has just happened to notice it at her feet. 

“You’re welcome.”

Lexa shoots Anuael a glare. The daemon ignores it, walking over to put herself between Lexa and the table. She leans in, insistent, until Lexa caves to the unspoken request and wraps both arms around Anuael’s neck. They did this more often when they were young -- when the training and isolation had been too much, and the walls would crowd them in on every side. Anuael had usually taken a fawn’s form, even then. Not always, as it really was confining to stick to one shape before settling. But both had understood what was expected of them. 

“Lexa,” Anuael says. “You have to remember.”

They both know the litany by heart: love, and duty, and sacrifice. Different things must be remembered for each, but each is a remembrance to live by. 

Lexa buries her face into her daemon’s neck, fingers scratching through her soft, dense fur. “Do you think I could forget?” she asks. She doesn’t let regret color her voice, but she knows Anuael feels it anyway. 

 

___________________________

 

Laerte continues to shift and change, as Clarke does. When they track the sniper he’s a fox, teeth snapping at the air as Clarke levels her gun. When Clarke backs her up against the table with _Gustus_ and _Costia_ like knives at her throat he’s a kestrel, perched up high with yellow eyes that look right into Lexa’s heart. When Lexa breathes _not you_ he drops, slipping into possum form mid-air as Clarke’s hands reach to catch him. He then curls on her shoulder to hide in her hair. Clarke almost runs from the tent, but Laerte sneaks backward glances, nose twitching, until the flap falls shut behind them both. 

When Lexa pulls Clarke close she’s almost too caught up in the slide of mouths, the feeling of hair curling over fingers, the heat of breath to notice Laerte. Almost. It’s hard to miss a butterfly the color of flame, beating so close to her face it sends currents of air across her cheeks -- so close she can almost feel the brush of wings. 

_I’m not ready_ , Clarke says, and Laerte settles in the hollow of her collarbone, shrinking as the orange bleeds away into a gray moth. _Not yet_ , she amends, and his color pales, becomes pearlescent, and Lexa feels like the moon has broken through the darkness of a consuming night.

 

___________________________

 

“He favors bird forms.”

Clarke looks up from where she’s adjusting the fit of her new gloves. Laerte is a crow, black to match the clothing Lexa has dressed her in and with an equal shine to his feathers. Nested in Clarke’s hair he almost resembles a matching piece of the outfit, and Lexa has to swallow a smile. 

“He does now,” Clarke says. “He used to spend most of his time as a mouse.”

Lexa crosses one leg over the other where she leans back on her bed, propped up on her elbows. “It is difficult to picture you with a mouse daemon.”

“I don’t think we ever thought he would settle like that?” Clarke makes a face. “The mouse form was just -- convenient. He could be as close to me as he wanted or he could run and hide.”

“It is also difficult to picture you so eager to run and hide.”

“I...” Clarke lets out a gusty sigh, flops next to Lexa on the bed in a move that tries too hard to be nonchalant to be so. Laerte flutters up to the support beam above their heads. Anuael, if Lexa thought to look, would be in her corner again, still and silent as a statue. But Lexa doesn’t feel like looking. “Things were different back then,” Clarke says finally, staring off into the middle distance. “It always felt like there were a lot of expectations.”

Lexa raises a careful eyebrow. She stretches out the fingers of both hands as if to indicate: them, their armor, the impending battle. 

“Okay, okay,” Clarke concedes. “I just, I felt like there wasn’t enough air on the Ark. There _was_ \-- then,” she amends under her breath. “But so many people were crammed into so little space, and all of them knew who I was. Who my parents were. Sometimes -- not all the time, but sometimes I wanted to be small, just so I would feel less...”

“Confined,” Lexa finishes for her. She thinks of herself, bruised and sore and even bleeding, and the moments she had stolen buried in Anuael’s neck for the relief of not having to show anyone her face. 

“Yeah,” Clarke breathes.

Lexa turns her head to find Clarke looking at her. Her heart beats a little faster at the soft expression on the other girl’s face, but she ignores it. “Do you want him to be a bird?”

“I don’t think I get to choose, exactly,” Clarke says thoughtfully. “Does anyone? But we’re a little bit older and hopefully wiser. We know what we want out of life, and maybe even who we have to be to get it. Or that was the idea.” 

Lexa lays back, lacing her hands behind her head. “You don’t need to be older to know all that.”

A grin twists at Clarke’s mouth. “Well, I suppose you didn’t.”

Lexa holds very still, breathes out the urge to roll over, reaching, and -- “Does Laerte need a token to wear into battle as well?” she asks, looking up above their heads. “Perhaps a silver charm around his neck to match.”

Clarke opens her mouth to answer, but ends up blinking in surprise as the daemon drops between them onto the bed, black wings fluttering. “Yes, please,” he says, voice high and light.

He’s not looking at either of them, allowing everyone to pretend he hasn’t just spoken to Lexa directly. 

Except they all appear to be wretched at pretending. Lexa feels her own mouth drop open and Clarke draws herself onto her knees, redness creeping up her neck. “Don’t give him anything,” she warns. “The treatment makes him a little, um, impulsive.”

“She’s being so nice!” Laertes says. “And you’re being so rude!” 

“You’d just try to swallow it, anyway,” Clarke mutters at the daemon.

“Why are you the only one who gets presents?” Laerte demands, hopping back and forth. 

“They’re not _presents_ , they’re --” Clarke casts an imploring look at Lexa, who has to bite the inside of her cheek. “I’m returning them afterward, so --”

“No,” Lexa murmurs. “You don’t have to. I suppose they are presents.”

“Okay, not helping,” Clarke says with a glare. 

“It’s not uncommon among the Clans for daemons to dress for combat,” Lexa says quickly as she sits up, hoping to distract them both. “It can intimidate one’s enemies.”

Laerte hops a little closer, peering at her. “Does Anuael?”

“ _Laerte_ ,” Clarke scolds, grabbing him and squashing him against her chest, but he still looks to Lexa for an answer.

She smiles at him, feeling prickling along all her limbs like the blood is rushing back to them. “We don’t like to make it complicated,” she tells him gently. “No jewels or collars. But sometimes I paint her face with the same pattern as mine. Perhaps, for this battle --”

“No.”

Clarke’s voice is surprisingly firm. She seems a little surprised at herself, even, but she straightens when they both look to her and repeats: “No. You shouldn’t cover up her face. It’s too beautiful.”

Lexa’s head snaps over to Anuael, who is now watching the three of them. No -- she’s watching Clarke, and dipping her head in a manner that, if they weren’t each half of the other, Lexa might be tempted to describe as _shy_. 

Clarke makes her excuses and leaves, carrying a squawking Laerte with her. Lexa rises from the bed as well and makes her way over to the daemon, who is still looking at the floor. Lexa sits next to her with knees bent, forearms balanced across them so that her hands dangle down between.

“I’ll never be able to convince you to wear paint again, will I?” she asks after a minute, and laughs when Anuael leans over to snort rudely into her hair. 

 

___________________________

 

_May we meet again._

They don’t look back. 

Not for Clarke, even as her heart breaks in her eyes. Not for Laerte as he falls from her shoulder to the ground, shifting, stretching into something wholly new. 

They can’t look back. 

 

___________________________

 

After the Mountain, Indra is the one to bring her the stories.

“Heda,” she says on her fourth visit. “I believe you should add to your guard.”

“You fear for my safety?” Lexa speaks from the throne, Anuael’s head a heavy weight in her lap. They are almost always touching, now, in company and out of it. The ache of misery is too much to be borne alone. “From a half-starved girl who never saw trees until a few months ago?”

Indra’s scowl deepens. “Octavia was my second. I know what it means when a Skaikru daemon settles.”

Lexa sighs. “You may leave us.”

“She is a threat to you. She has chosen --”

“ _Leave_.”

She does, her beaver daemon chittering with frustration at her heels.

Anuael raises her head. “It could be a coincidence.”

“We were there when Laerte settled. Do you think it is a coincidence?”

Anuael searches her face. “You’re a fool.” Her eyes are wide and frightened. “You _want_ it to mean that they’re coming back. For us.”

Lexa hooks her fingers around the roots of her antlers, holding Anuael still until her ears stop twitching. “So do you.”

The stories of Clarke of the Skaikru have little in common since she left her people and disappeared into the woods. Some say she is weakened and panicked, foraging at the edges of villages like a wild animal. Some claim she’s dangerous, bloody hands and bared teeth coming at any of those unlucky enough to come upon her in the forest. Some even whisper that the silent figure which wears her face and steps out of the shadows without a sound must be a ghost. The stories contradict each other on almost every point. 

But always, always, always, she is accompanied by a snarling shadow, and the mournful howl of a wolf.


End file.
